Jalebi Walla

[caption id="attachment_77" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Crisp on the outside, soft on the inside - freshly fried jalebi"][/caption]

Jalebi 

Jalebi are a delicious kind of India sweet that you see being made at street stalls all accross Delhi in the evenings. Strands of dough made using maida flour are poured down onto the surface of a wok full of oil in a pretzel. The oil bubbles around the dough, turning its outside beautifully golden and crisp, while leaving the inside much softer. The twisted strands are then soaked in a syrup, so that the spongy dough at the centre can absorb this sweetness. 

Its an amazing treat to buy these freshly made on the street, with the dough still warm and the sticky syrup dripping out of it onto your fingers. Biting in, you break through the crisp shell and into the spongy centre that is overloaded with sweet syruppy sauce. It reminds a little bit of the contrast in textures which chinese fritters have, with the soft fruit inside and the crispy shell.

[caption id="attachment_80" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Jalebi frying in a wok"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_78" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Jalebi Wallas in Paharganj"][/caption]

Where

The place I would always return to for these was the street sellers about half way down the Main Bazaar in Paharganj. They sit, hunched beneath the hard light of a single bulb, frying up stacks of Jalebi which they pile up glossily on the trays in front. I never really understood why there were two stalls here, right next to each other, both making exactly the same thing. They seemed to do almost equal business, although I would always go for whichever one looked the freshest when I arrived.

For foreigners, they charge R5 for a Jalebi, but I noticed that locals usually seem to pay a lot less. They also sell Emerti for R5 a slightly more densely twisted sweet that lacks the crispness of the Jalebi but is equally tasty. 

There's plenty of other places around the city for getting Jalebi too. At the far end of Main Bazaar, near the turning for the metro, another guy had a cart making Jelebi, but these weren't nearly as good as those from the above stalls. They were very thin, lacking the chewy, spongy-sweet centre.

If you walk along Chadni Chowk on the right hand side, heading towards the Red Fort, then you will pass a famous Jalebi Shop which has been there a long time (I think its on the corner of Chandi Chowk and Dariba Kalan Road but I'm not sure) - It has a big black and silver sign and also does samosas and other snacks.